Author: Shi Tai

Editor: Roomy

Under the banner of “doing something for women”, it is often dangerous because the boundaries are hard to grasp. One can easily end up defining the so-called “female understanding” from a “male” perspective.

This is not aimed at the recently controversial auto brand, ORA, which claimed to “love women the most”. It is for everyone present.

For example, various TV dramas that promote the idea of a female protagonist often show a strong sense of conflict. I won’t name them one by one because almost all of them are like this. What kind of conflict is this?

On the one hand, women are supposed to be independent, and on the other hand, there are various dominant CEOs who fall in love with them during their journey to independence. To put it bluntly, the reason for the conflict is that all creators have not yet found the core of female independence – “self-discovery”.

How should a woman define herself? Where does a woman’s worth come from? How to balance between female independence and marriage?

The answer cannot come from anyone else, only from each independent woman. Being defined by others is to deprive women of their position as independent individuals. This is a mistake made by ORA and the root cause of some discussions.

Suddenly thought of another topic that is logically similar. What is the definition of success? Perhaps there is no standard answer, but everyone has their own opinion. The only word that can be associated with success is “are you happy”. Your happiness, whether it comes from having a car and a house, is a kind of success, and his happiness, whether it comes from sleeping undisturbed for a week, is also a kind of success.

Returning to the topic of defining women, it is the same. For example, the mother’s generation believed that children having successful careers and being healthy was happiness. Can we say that they were not independent? For example, many people in our generation remain single, studying what they like and doing what they want, but have not yet married or had children. Can we say that they are not successful women? For example, a woman who grew up in the mountains dreamed of leaving one day and eventually achieved independence and success.

Not defining is the true care.

Talking about caring for women is a good starting point. ORA’s brand concept can be understood that they want to provide women with a platform to showcase their personality. However, they were mocked by the crowd. Where did they go wrong?

The mistake is that they drew a circle around “women” and pasted some superficial labels such as “pink” and “makeup”. They did not understand what the core of independent women was, and therefore locked their own brand concept.The topic of Euler not only fermenting within the automotive industry but also sparking some discussions among women. The following letter is written from the perspective of a woman and her female friends, discussing why Euler did not hit their hearts.

After coming across another male friend’s endorsement of Euler’s ballet-cat marketing on social media, I suppressed my gradually rising irritability and posted a high-definition picture of the ballet cat from Euler’s official website in my sisters’ group.

The ballet cat, lying still with an indescribable color and posture, emits a transparent and plastic light around the car’s body on a gradient meat powder colored background. The combination of the front face, headlights, and wheel hub produces a soft, unintelligent curve that is small, solid, and harmless. This ambiguous color that lies between flesh and mud also has an exclusive name: Golden Wind and Jade Dew. The official website introduces it this way: “If we were to meet under the Golden Wind and Jade Dew, but missed the chance like the bright wind, clear moon, and flawless white jade, how would it be better than being in the world?”

In “Xinwei Qixi,” a poem by Tang Dynasty poet Li Shangyin, he wrote: “The silver riverbank of the blue sky comes from the golden wind and jade dew.” Qin Guan, a poet from the Northern Song Lyrical School, also mentioned the Golden Wind and Jade Dew in “The Fairy of Magpie Bridge · The Artful Entanglement of Fine Clouds.” It says, “If we were to meet under the Golden Wind and Jade Dew, we would surpass the many numbers in the world.” The Golden Wind and Jade Dew is a term that refers to the scene of autumn, but it is mostly used to refer to the love between the cowherd and the Weaver Girl and their reunion after a long separation. Over time, it has become a symbol of the beautiful longing for love. The car design and its exclusive color of the ballet cat has a clear attachment to its image: a lady who loves pink, longs for love, and is not sensitive to the subtle boundaries of imitation and tribute.

I restrained my quickly forming bias and asked humbly, “Excuse me, what do you guys think of this car?” Conveying a sudden survey with a modest and rare tone particle at the end to cover up the style of questioning.

“It’s pretty cute.”

“The price is not cute. It looks like a beetle.”

“The beetle is out of production. It’s bold tribute.”

“I don’t like it! (Is it okay for me to say that?)”

“I’m not interested in cars.”

“This color scheme doesn’t look expensive.”

“It feels like an old lady’s commuting vehicle.”

“Why buy this instead of a mini?”

“For me, it’s a bit too cute….”

“This car is ordinary. I like a sharper edge.”This is a 15-person WeChat group, mostly consisting of editors and stylists in the fashion industry. Some of them need to borrow dozens of sets of luxury brands’ seasonal new products for several hours of shooting for a celebrity cover, pushing 3-5 28-inch suitcases filled with Chinese clothing, accessories, and shoes before the most dazzling person arrives, ironing each wrinkle one by one; some of them need to sit with celebrities, relying on their confidence built word by word to bridge the insurmountable gap and ask questions to the most responsive people. They are used to the folding of the city, but also a kind of illusory reality connection. At this moment, they chatter away with their exclusive focus on fashion, rarely intertwined with the automotive industry, and give their first impressions of Ballet Cat.

They are not familiar with new energy or emerging car manufacturers, but if we consider the nature of their work, age group, and life status, they may be the most skilled people in breaking down restrictions such as gender, age, and new and old in the “beauty” industry. In one round of fashion cycles after another, they continue to identify and clean up the opposites of beauty, such as coarseness, repetition, deliberate aesthetics, and thinness.

If you examine the responses in the group in detail, you can also get a clear understanding of their taste preferences for a car: they don’t mind pink, but they require a texture that is not tacky; they don’t like soft or even young lines, but instead prefer sharp edges; they pursue value for money rather than paying for looks.

However, Ballet Cat’s appearance seems to be hitting the wrong note.

Ignoring the problems with the body design and color matching, the product’s marketing copy alone reveals a sexist mentality, such as naming loyalty, preference, and love in the rights package for the first owner; or the “we will take care of you while he’s busy for you” line in the warm-hearted male mode…

Actually, the functional principle is not complicated – one key to start the air conditioning, seat, and steering wheel heating – but trying to forcibly fit it into a gender context in the most unappealing way possible; the pushed feature memory point and the fixed female functional attributes are strongly linked, such as the cosmetics pack of a large-sized makeup mirror, LED surround lighting, and storage compartments being packaged into a mobile makeup room; there is also a child mode for the mom role, playing children’s songs, and monitoring the condition of the backseat children in real time. The extension of the car scene is uninspiring, paired with a price tag of 193,000 to 223,000 yuan. It can be said that from the brand concept to the marketing rhetoric, to the function names, Ola Ballet Cat shows everywhere that there is not enough empathy with women.

Of course, it is not to completely negate Ola’s starting point.# Translation

The Euler Ballet Cat does not completely ignore women. “Guardian Mode” is a good example. According to official materials, there is a hidden button below the driver’s seat of the Ballet Cat. When a female driver’s safety is threatened, she can touch it to send in-car images and location information to five pre-set contact phones, while keeping it silent. Combining with social news events, it is a proactive consideration of women’s safety by Ballet Cat.

If Ballet Cat continues to move forward along this path, it can consider seats, comfort, safety, etc. based on differences in the physical shapes of women. It can also add more technical support from the perspective of intelligent driving, such as improving the in-car atmosphere and driver privacy. Alternatively, it can combine the free-spirited and popular direction of the current female protagonist with the driving experience and operational experience, like “Sisters Riding the Wind and Waves” and “Dream Splendor.” Purely relying on love is not fun, and being stuck in a fixed character setting is even less interesting.

Assisted by the expression pack, a randomly initiated product “encirclement” came to an end. Once again, I felt the irreplaceability of the sister gossip group, which can quickly help you find emotional comfort by venting or sending funny pictures. We speak freely, based solely on intuition, saying one thing and another.

This is also what I did not see in Ballet Cat’s marketing strategy: the true voice of women. An automobile brand that claims to “love women more” but, in terms of product design and marketing approach, is constantly conveying superficial and arrogant stereotypes such as “they don’t understand cars,” “they love pink,” “they only think about love,” and “they have no career aspirations.” Women are too familiar with this kind of gender stereotype.

Although product definition is a market behavior where the buyer pays voluntarily, claiming to “love women more” and “understand women more” while constantly dragging them back to the unnecessary “spoiling” cannot help but be regrettable. The image of women who love pink, do not understand cars, and only pay for looks and successful men who run companies, have good wives at home and work early and return home late, both belong to an extreme, and no gender-imposed image is easier to break free from.

Conclusion:

After reading this not so short letter, I suddenly thought of a line from the previously popular idol drama “Love O2O.” Shan Shan said to Yi Chen, “I will be obedient. I am the best-behaved.”The reason why Euler’s brand concept deviates is that from the current general manager, product director to the brand spokesperson, they are all men. They use labels such as pink, make-up mirrors, nutcrackers, Alice, etc. to put women in an invisible touch in the language of love, playing the role of spoiling, just like He Yisheng.

Of course, as a woman, I always look forward to feminist expression, but I hope that one day, there will be no extra labels for women, only one, which is “I am free”.

After all, from ancient times to the present, there are too many restrictions bound to women. If we care about them, we should not give them any more labels.

This article is a translation by ChatGPT of a Chinese report from 42HOW. If you have any questions about it, please email bd@42how.com.